German Politics and Society

After having devoted space in the last few open issues of German Politics and Society to excellent articles focusing on topics of culture and micropolitics, we feature in this issue three articles solidly anchored in macropolitics.

In October 1998 the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens1

formed a coalition government, the first ever between these parties at

the federal level. In more ways than one, this new coalition marked a

watershed in Germany’s post-1945 development. Since 1945, Germany

had been a democracy in which political parties hold an especially

privileged position. This “party-state” has operated almost

exclusively through the three major “Bonn” parties, which for nearly

a half-century had governed through shifting coalitions. The Greens

arose as a social movement challenging this hegemony; yet, only fifteen

years after they first entered the Bundestag, they forged a federal

coalition with one of the established parties they had once attacked.

For the first time since 1957, a coalition had been formed that

involved not only a party other than the three “Bonn” parties but also

one not linked to the Federal Republic’s creation. It was, furthermore,

the first coalition ever to have resulted unambiguously from

the wishes of voters.

Perhaps the most remarkable development in the Federal Republic

of Germany since World War II has been the creation of its stable

democracy. Already by the second half of the 1950s, political commentators

proclaimed that “Bonn is not Weimar.” Whereas the

Weimar Republic faced the proliferation of splinter parties, the rise

of extremist parties, and the fragmentation of support for liberal and

conservative parties—conditions that led to its ultimate collapse—the

Federal Republic witnessed the blossoming of moderate, broadbased

parties.1 By the end of the 1950s the Christian Democratic

Union/Christian Social Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party

(SPD) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) had formed the basis of a

stable party system that would continue through the 1980s.

In December 1989, the ruling communist party of East Germany,

the Socialist Unity Party (SED), was reconstituted when it adopted the

name Socialist Unity Party-Party of Democratic Socialism (SED-PDS),

which was simplified on 4 February 1990 to the Party of Democratic

Socialism.1 The brand of Marxism-Leninism that had prevailed in the

German Democratic Republic (GDR) appeared to be irredeemably

discredited, and the new leadership of this successor party was

obliged to create an alternative vision of socialism and to redefine

their political goals. The PDS program of 1990,2 with its clear adoption

of a feminist agenda, constituted a breach with the party’s political

past. Whereas the Marxist-Leninist theory underpinning SED

policy had been based on the principle that inequality is economically

determined, the new PDS program acknowledged patriarchy

as a separate issue.

Micha Brumlik, Hajo Funke and Lars Rensmann, Umkämpftes Vergessen: Walser-Debatte, Holocaust-Mahnmal und neuere deutsche Geschichtspolitik (Berlin: Verlag Das Arabische Buch, 2000)

Robert G. Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)

Klaus Naumann, Der Krieg als Text: Das Jahr 1945 im kulturellen Gedächtnis der Presse (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1998) Klaus Neumann, Shifting Memories: The Nazi Past in the New Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000)

Stephen Eric Bronner, A Rumor about the Jews: Reflections on Antisemitism and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000)

Dan Diner, Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California, 2000)

Janet Ward, Weimar Surfaces: Urban Visual Culture in 1920s Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)

Bernd Widdig, Culture and Inflation in Weimar Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001)

A. James McAdams, Judging the Past in Unified Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Christiane Olivo, Creating a Democratic Civil Society in Eastern Germany: The Case of the Citizen Movements and Alliance 90 (New York: Palgrave, 2001)

David P. Conradt, Gerald R. Kleinfeld, and Christian Søe, Power Shift in Germany: The 1998 Election and the End of the Kohl Era (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000)

Charles Lees, The Red-Green Coalition in Germany: Politics, Personalities, and Power (New York: Manchester University Press, 2001)

Gerald D. Feldman, Allianz and the German Insurance Business 1933-1945 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001)

Review by Harold James

Mark Allinson, Politics and popular opinion in East Germany 1945-68 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)

Review by Catherine Epstein

Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (London and New York: Routledge, 2000)

Review by Christian Rogowski